Hominids

by Robert J. Sawyer

Series:

Neanderthal #1

Publisher:

Tor

Copyright:

May 2002

Printing:

February 2003

ISBN:

0-765-34500-5

Format:

Mass market

Pages:

444

This is the Hugo award winner for 2003. I have absolutely no idea why.
With the possible exception of Kiln
People, which I've not yet read, it's far and away the worst book on
the short list. I'm getting very close to the point of just ignoring the
Hugos completely.

The basic story is that the Neanderthals prospered in a parallel world
while Homo sapiens becomes extinct. One of the Neanderthals is
accidentally shunted into our world as a side effect of a scientific
experiment. A clash of culture ensues.

Well, sort of. What actually ensues is a pile of self-righteous, cliched,
preachy tripe. The Neanderthals have perfect population control, have
bred violence largely out of their society (without losing anything
important, no less), have a perfect judicial system without real privacy
concerns, are generally happy, well-adjusted, near-perfect people. And so
on and so on, until the reader is utterly sick of it. The unrelenting,
simplistic slam on Homo sapiens culture is at least woven into
the story rather than concentrated in chunks of preaching, so there's some
reason to keep reading, but it never reaches the point of credibility.

Some sections are just spectacularly bad. At the point that the only
justification for religion that one of the human characters could muster
was Pascal's Wager (!) and the Neanderthal concludes that the reason why
human society is so messed up is because the belief in a God means no one
cares about the current life nearly had me throwing the book across the
room. I don't even like religion, but come on.

I like books that challenge assumptions and that tackle hard questions
about human identity, but they have to actually say something interesting.
I don't even mind books that get preachy if they offer some compelling
story, but this one doesn't, and the preaching says nothing interesting.
It just handwaves through all of the reasons why human culture is the way
that it is and seems to have as its goal making the reader feel guilty
about how screwed up Homo sapiens is. The random rape of one of
the main human characters at the beginning of the book, just so that it
can be used as an illustration of how our society is full of evil male
violence, is typical of this whole book.

The book is competently plotted and the writing isn't horrible, although
the characters occasionally come across as ham-handed cliches. The book
is not, however, competently thought through. Avoid.